So i had about given up on this little project because the dimensions of the bird house in relation to the background were wrong, and multiple trials of attempting to fix it didn’t work. Actually the main reason i played with it again was because i wanted to get back to a canvas where the surface and the paint worked well together (as they did not in the smoke bush study). This is not finished, but seems in better shape than it’s been.

As all of you know, the painting class i attended for several years has not met for months because of the pandemic; and actually not for months prior to that because our latest teacher moved. So i’ve been trying different ideas out on my own. For the past several weeks one of my painting friends came over to sit and paint with me in my front yard. We each chose a subject and worked separately on our little projects for several hours. I wanted to try to paint a smoke bush. Worked just on that the first time; second time i added an aspen tree which in real life was behind the smoke bush and pretty much out of view. I might have been able to pull that off if i’d started the painting with the aspen — but i didn’t because at the time i was only thinking about the smoke bush. Once i tried painting the aspen i decided to also make a “scene” by adding a brick wall which does not actually exist. I have not finished the aspen tree — it needs a lot more foliage which i hope to get to this week.

The biggest problem with this project turned out to be the (poor) quality of the canvas itself. I used one which i recycled and the surface just wouldn’t hold the paint in place. So everything blurred almost immediately. Not sure how long i’ll try to get this one to “work” — but had fun with the idea.